Thursday, April 9, 2015

Today, April 9. marks the 150th anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on this date in 1865, an event which for many Americans symbolizes the end of the American Civil War. It wasn't, but is a good reason to retell the tale of the ex-US and Confederate officers who were recruited into the Egyptian Army, which wanted Western officers with experience but distrusted Britain and France. But first, why Appomattox was only the beginning of the end.

Though because of its activity in the critical theater between Washington and Richmond, Lee's Army got the most attention, it was the first major army to surrender (since Vicksburg), not the last. Mosby's Raiders disbanded April 21, a week after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; Joseph E. Johnston did not surrender the Army of Tennessee until April 26. after the Battle of Bentonville. Other Confederate Forces in the southeastern states surrendered between May 2 and May 12, with Union troops capturing the fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis on May 5. The last land battle of the Civil War took place at Palmito Ranch in Texas on May 12-13, and General Kirby Smith surrendered the main armies west of the Mississippi on May 26. The last Confederate land force of any size to surrender was Cherokee Brigadier General Stand Watie's Cherokee and allied Indian force, which surrendered June 23, more than two months after Appomattox.

The last shots fired by a Confederate warship were fired by the Confederate naval raider CSS Shenandoah in, of all places, Alaskan waters on June 22. She attacked a fleet of Union whaling vessels. After taking some as prizes, a San Francisco newspaper on one of the captured ships was found on June 27, and the Shenandoah learned of Lee's surrender. That paper dated from before the other surrenders, however, and her captain James Waddell planned to raid San Francisco but on August 2 was hailed by a British ship and learned of the other surrenders and the capture of Davis. Fearing to surrender at San Francisco lest a US court charge him with piracy, Waddell then removed the ship's guns and, appearing as a merchant vessel, sailed her around Cape Horn bound for Britain. The last Confederate naval ship also became the only Confederate warship to circumnavigate the globe. He surrendered her on November 6, 1865, almost seven months after Appomattox, to the Royal Navy. She had fired the last shots in Alaskan waters, and made the last surrender months later — in Liverpool.

Still, the image of Lee and Grant at Appomattox is most people's sense of how the war ended and besides, today is as good a day as any to retell the tale I told five years ago. And given the discursus above, it may be worth noting that the CSSShenandoah ended her life in the service of the Sultan of Zanzibar. She was not the only Civil War veteran to find an afterlife in the east.

This is going to be one of my "And now for something completely
different" posts. I've mentioned an interest in military history and you
know my interest in Egypt. This post combines the two.

At
left, Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone of the Union Army, early
in the US Civil War. Below, Lieutenant General Charles Pomeroy Stone
(Stone Pasha) during his 13-year tenure (1871-1883) as Chief of Staff of
the Egyptian Army under the Khedives Isma‘il and Tawfiq.

Probably
relatively few Americans, other than Civil War buffs and historians
interested in 19th century Egyptian history, are aware of Isma‘il's
recruitment of a number of American officers, both former Union and
former Confederate, in the years after the American Civil War.

Charles P. Stone, Egyptian Chief of Staff

It's
not hard to understand why the Khedive was interested in Americans. He
hoped to keep up the expansionist policies of his predecessors Muhammad
‘Ali Pasha and Ibrahim Pasha, especially in the Sudan; the country was
already incurring large debts in Europe, that would ultimately lead to a
British (unofficial but de facto)
protectorate, and therefore France and Britain were not a good source
of military advice since you don't want your potential colonizers to
have intimate knowledge of your military. The United States, on the
other hand, had no visible interests in the Middle East (except for
Christian missions) in those days.

And
having just fought the bloodiest war in its history (which proved a
temporary boon to Egypt since Southern US cotton was blockaded from the
world market), the US also was a source of experienced and underemployed
military officers. To the Egyptians, which army they had served in was
moot. It would be nice to say it was moot to the Americans as well, but there was one notorious shootout in Alexandria [2010 link now dead in 2015] between ex-Rebs and ex-Yanks.

According to the most detailed study of the Americans who served in Egypt, William B. Hesseltine and Hazel C. Wolf's The Blue and the Gray on the Nile (University of Chicago Press, 1961; still some copies listed on Amazon),
around 50 Americans eventually were recruited for Egyptian service. A
few of them were prominent enough that the average Civil War buff may
know them, among them Stone (more on whom in a moment); Henry Sibley, inventor of the Sibley tent and who, as a colonel, led the Confederate invasion of New Mexico until defeated at Glorieta; William W. Loring,
who reached Corps command in the Confederate Army; and a few others.
Some would make their name in Egyptian service, however, notably Charles Chaillé-Long,
who only rose to be a captain in the Union Army, but achieved lasting
fame as an explorer of sub-Saharan Africa, serving under Gordon in
Equatoria, then exploring the great lakes (he was the second explorer
to visit Lake Victoria), and writing a number of books. (Though I
suspect Central Africa: Naked Truths of Naked People would not be given that title today.)

Many
prominent ex-Confederate generals reportedly considered Egyptian
service, among them P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph Johnston, but didn't
go. William Tecumseh Sherman, General in Chief of the US Army in the
late 1860s (under the Presidency of his close friend and predecessor,
U.S. Grant), encouraged the Egyptian adventure and even released some
serving officers to participate.

The driving force of
this whole adventure was Thaddeus P. Mott. Before the Civil War he had
lived in Constantinople, was a favorite at the Ottoman Sultan's court,
married a Turkish wife and was reportedly quite at home in the East. He
went home to serve in the Civil War, rose to colonel in the Union Army,
then returned to Turkey after the war. There he met the Khedive Isma‘il
and soon found himself in Egyptian service in time for the grand opening
of the Suez Canal. He became Khedivial chamberlain and went to the US
to recruit for the Egyptian Army.

Which brings us back to Charles Pomeroy Stone.
Stone had been badly treated by the Army and the political authorities,
so much so that later some would refer to him as an "American Dreyfus"
for his alleged culpability in the military disaster that was the Battle
of Ball's Bluff, up the Potomac from Washington, on October 21, 1861.

Stone's
war started well: a West Pointer and a Mexican War veteran, he was
considered a favorite of General-in-Chief Winfield Scott. He famously
secured the City of Washington before President Lincoln's arrival, and
helped set up its defenses.

But Stone was no
politician, and he fell out with two key figures from his home state:
Massachusetts Governor John Andrew and Senator Charles Sumner, both
Radical Republicans and abolitionists. The exact details are not so
important as that he made powerful political enemies early on, but among
the charges were that he returned runaway slaves in Maryland. But
Maryland was a Union state which had slavery, and its law required that,
as did Federal law.

In October, with George McClellan
having replaced Scott, Stone was given command of a "Corps of
Observation" and sent up the Potomac to observe the fords of the river.
He was ordered to make a "demonstration" against Leesburg, Virginia.

Stone
held a position south of Leesburg and sent half his force, under
Colonel Edward Baker, to the north to make a landing and push towards
Leesburg from the river. Now, Colonel Baker was also a sitting United
States Senator from Oregon. (Yes, a sitting Senator was commanding an
Army regiment.) But Colonel/Senator Baker had friends in high places.
He'd started out as a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, and had worked
with a chap called Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln's son Eddie's full name was
Edward Baker Lincoln. Is a picture starting to emerge?

Now
it's important to realize that, though ultimate command was his,
General Stone was not present at the Battle of Ball's Bluff. Baker was
the senior officer on the scene. If you go to the Battlefield today, you
will find it still fairly unspoiled (though a Leesburg subdivision is
creeping closer) and what you see is this: a steep bluff over the
Potomac which required men to physically haul cannon up the cliff face
while making an opposed landing on a hostile shore with a river at their
back. My nine-year-old daughter [as of 2010 posting; now 15 and even better at tactics] has commented that that makes no sense.
She's quite right. One look at the position should have been enough to
warn off anyone over age nine. Let's see: steep bluffs we had to climb
and drag our cannons up, check; superior enemy forces to our front,
check; river at our back and no retreat possible, check; let's attack.

At
first things seemed to go all right, and then the Confederates noticed
the Union troops were there. The Confederate commander was Nathan "Shanks" Evans,
who had a reputation (whether justified or not) for sometimes going
into battle drunk, but given the situation at Ball's Bluff, that was no
impediment to victory.

In the heated battle that
followed, the Union troops found themselves pushed off the steep bluff,
some falling to the river below. It's said that for a day or two bodies
were washing up on the bridges of Georgetown. During the battle, Senator
Baker made his only good career move of the day: he got himself killed,
heroically of course. (I'm sure the image at right is highly accurate
historically.)

Now,
here's a powerful Republican senator and old personal friend of Lincoln
(despite his actually having beaten Lincoln for a nomination in earlier
years). He has proceeded to die a martyr's death. The war was only some
six months old at this point and the carnage to come was only
beginning. Somebody had to take the blame.

And it wasn't going to be the ruling party's newly martyred Senator/General.

And
Stone, remember, had powerful enemies. The Radical
Republican-controlled Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, a
Congressional watchdog, called hearings.

Ball's Bluff
was a disaster, and professional officers naturally may expect a
disaster on their watch, even if due to a subordinate's incomprehensible
decisions, to affect their career. But Ball's Bluff didn't just tarnish
Stone's career. Amid charges of suspicious links with Confederates (his
wife's father had been a roommate of Jeff Davis at West Point or
something like that, but of course Jefferson Davis had later been the US Secretary of War) and hints of treason, Stone was arrested and confined to prison.

That
was in January of 1862. He served in various fort-prisons until August
when, no charges ever having been filed against him or specified, he was
released. No apologies, explanations, or charges were ever forthcoming.

Of
course his military career in US service was over. So when the war
ended, he was looking for a way to vindicate is reputation. And Mott
showed up, recruiting for the Khedive.

Stone became
Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army in 1871 and served in that post
until 1883, serving Isma‘il and, from 1879, his son and successor
Tawfiq. He built up a general staff (though it drastically countered the
traditional command structure of Egyptian military forces) and also
participated in some campaigns.

General Loring, CSA

Most of the Americans
did not stay as long as Stone Pasha. Ultimately, when Colonel ‘Urabi's
revolt broke out in 1882, Stone stayed with the Khedive in Alexandria
though his wife and children were in Cairo.

The
British intervention ended the ‘Urabi revolt, but also brought new
masters to Egypt. Frustrated by the emerging British
protectorate-in-all-but-name, Stone finally stepped down in 1883.

His
reputation seemingly redeemed in his homeland, Stone later directed the
construction of the base on which the Statue of Liberty stands in New
York harbor.

General Loring, Egyptian Army

Since I've shown the US and Egyptian
photos of Stone above, it is perhaps appropriate to do the same for one
of his Confederate analogs: General William "Old Blizzards" Loring,
one of the more senior Confederates in Egyptian service (probably the
most senior since he'd held Corps command in the CSA), first as a
Confederate General, then as Loring Pasha, variously Inspector General
of the Egyptian Infantry, chief of Coastal Defenses, and a field
commander. (You may note the empty sleeve in both pictures: he lost his
left arm in Mexico City in his first war. For those of you reading this
outside the US or Mexico, the US-Mexican war of 1846-48 was the training
ground for a lot of Civil War generals, then junior company and field
officers for the most part.)

There was a fan site in 2010 for Old Blizzards in fact, [link appears dead in 2015] with the motto "Three Flags, Four Continents" (the flags are the US,
the Confederacy, and Egypt, though they (correctly for the era) use the
Turkish flag. I think the continents are North America, Europe, Asia and
Africa).

The name "Old Blizzards" comes from the early
days of the Civil War when, opposing George McClellan in what was to
become West Virginia, he supposedly gave the battle cry, "Give them
blizzards, boys! Give them blizzards!" (Wouldn't have worked in Egypt, I
fear.)

The site says he's the only one of the
Americans who actually commanded Egyptian troops, but I'm not certain
about that as some of the other Americans went on Egyptian operations
from Sudan to the Indian Ocean.

"Michael Collins Dunn is the editor of The Middle East Journal. He also blogs. His latest posting summarizes a lot of material on the Iranian election and offers some sensible interpretation. If you are really interested in the Middle East, you should check him out regularly."— Gary Sick, Gary's Choices

"Since we’re not covering the Tunisian elections particularly well, and neither does Tunisian media, I’ll just point you over here. It’s a great post by MEI editor Michael Collins Dunn, who . . . clearly knows the country pretty well."— alle, Maghreb Politics Review

"I’ve followed Michael Collins Dunn over at the Middle East Institute’s blog since its beginning in January this year. Overall, it is one of the best blogs on Middle Eastern affairs. It is a selection of educated and manifestly knowledgeable ruminations of various aspects of Middle Eastern politics and international relations in the broadest sense."— davidroberts at The Gulf Blog

"Michael Collins Dunn, editor of the prestigious Middle East Journal, wrote an interesting 'Backgrounder' on the Berriane violence at his Middle East Institute Editor’s Blog. It is a strong piece, but imperfect (as all things are) . . ."— kal, The Moor Next DoorThis great video of Nasser posted on Michael Collins Dunn’s blog (which is one of my favorites incidentally) ...— Qifa Nabki